Another good week. I got home from work to find a package from a friend had arrived containing a long out of production treasure (Big thanks to Jay Epperhart). The Star Wars Action Fleet was a line of toys that produced medium quality reproductions of various ships seen in the movies as well as ships only described in various bits of the expanded universe stories. There was no scale, just made to fit the box they shipped in. But as luck would have it, the Action Fleet Acclamator, a predecessor to the Venator line of Star Destroyer, is exactly 1/4222. This is really cool for me, as no one makes a kit of the Acclamator in this size and it is perfectly in scale with the Venator and the ISD in my collection.
The detail on this kit is good for a toy, but needs just a little work to be displayed next to the rest of my Star Destroyer line. Here it is right out of the box. All of the panels you see are part of the paint. When I repaint this, they will disappear leaving only smooth panels, which is not very visually interesting.
I tried using some vinyl to cover the panel areas, but I didn't like the look.
Instead, I have been cutting styrene strip to cover them. This is much more time consuming process, but the end result is by far worth it. This way I still get the all the detail of the panel lines, and it gives the model a little more three dimensionality.
On to the next challenge, the ventral hull. This is were being designed for a toy is giving me the most work. The hole for the screws holding the top and bottom hulls together were left open and the plastic was molded around them. Also there were two open holes about mid way back where wire was run to hold the ship to the packaging. Also, while the Acclamator did have landing gear,the toy has massive exaggerated the size of them and since they are supposed to retract into the hull in flight, having the back landing gear just folding back is not an option. So to begin, I removed the screws and filled the holes with superglue. I then used my Dremel to to sand the open hole down to fit the profile of the raised trench and then covered it with some styrene. I also covered the two outside holes with some guns from a 1/700 scale battleship kit.
Here you can see that the hole for the toy stand has been filled, and the back landing gear removed. I have covered the landing gear holes with temporary parts, I haven't decided if I like them yet and my redo them.
I have finished with adding the styrene strip, and have covered all the landing gear areas with styrene detail as well.
Finished, the Acclamator Class Star Destroyer Hart's Fist:
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